


Contingency Plan

by xel



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Also Widowmaker can do a lot of damage with a wrench apparently., F/F, what nerds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-27 06:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8391634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xel/pseuds/xel
Summary: Contingency plans: Tracer doesn't have them. So when Tracer picks up Widowmaker on her radar as she's flying over the United States she decides to investigate. After all, Widow's been MIA for a bit from Talon's shenanigans. Colour her curious.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This came about from a prompt and was originally posted as a one-shot. But I have two more chapters I want to write for it, so I'm putting it here so that I can do that haha...

Lena’s fiddling with her gear, spinning on her heels. She sticks her pulse bomb to the boulders of the cave entrance - maybe this time they’ll blow away the rubble? Maybe, maybe, but then - maybe not, too.

Amélie has murder in her eyes but no rifle in her hands so she’s taken to crossing her arms, glaring, sighing, recognizing that sighing doesn’t quite seem severe enough and so glaring more.

Lena watches Amélie from the corner of her eye, and thinks some god has taken pity on her, that Amélie’s weapon is currently crushed under the rocks of the cave in. Lena lets out a sigh and pivots to face the other woman, plastering on her biggest smile. 

“Bombs away,” she chirps, endeavoring to lighten the mood. It ... doesn't appear to have worked. Lena shrinks when Amélie’s eyes narrow by a hair.

There was a time, not so terribly long ago, that Amélie would have smiled at her behind a hand and made a quip and Lena’s heart would have fluttered stupidly and guiltily: it was unpleasant (but also exciting) to have a crush on a married woman.

Now, Lena’s heart still flutters stupidly and she still feels guilty, but Amélie does not smile - she turns her head and stares hard at the wall to their right; Lena is reminded of everything they no longer are to one another.

Confidantes and comrades top that list like cream settled above some nasty thing.

But the past is the past! Lena cannot change it; and Amélie is here now - so ... that's something?

Lena zips away from the bomb and the rocks it's stuck to. They both cover their ears. The blast is blue light in a dark world, and it stirs up dust and little bits of rock, but when the debris clears, the entrance is still blocked and they’re still stuck on the wrong side.

As an added bit of bad news, that was Lena’s last bomb. Lena says as much; when Amélie simply glares back, she speaks up again:

“Don’ worry, love, Overwatch’ll have us out in a jiffy!” And Lena wants it to be the truth, but chances are actually more likely that Talon will be here first; everyone in Overwatch is out in the field. Amélie doesn’t know this, it’s probably better that way.

* * *

 Here’s what transpires to get them to now: Lena is flying over the United States and on her way back from a mission when she picks Amélie up on her radar. Amélie has been MIA from Talon for several months now, and equally absent from Overwatch’s radars. (So has Gabriel, for that matter, though Lena has not found Gabriel on her radar over the continental United States and doesn’t think she’s likely to).

Lena lands in Montana; in the crossfires of a shootout between Amélie and some Talon operatives and it’s an easy thing, really, the easiest thing, for Lena to blink into the chaos and aid the purple-skinned grump master.

Most of it’s reflex, some of it’s hope - a tiny bit of it is that crush she’s never gotten over, and likely never will.

This firefight starts in a snow-coated forest - through trees and shrubs and little pockets of ice - and ends with a bang in an abandoned coal mine (Lena had run in, trying to find shelter while her chronal accelerator recharged ...  Amélie had run after her yelling French profanities ... but then, Lena thinks with a grin, she _had_ followed) where Lena’s pulse bombs don’t even scratch the boulders blocking the exit, where Amélie glowers at the wall (and at Lena, and at life in general probably), and where two Talon agents know their whereabouts and have almost certainly already called in reinforcements.

It is not, Lena is happy to say, the _worst_ day of her life. It just happens to not be a particularly great one either.

* * *

 

And now: Amélie huffs once more, brushes the rubble from her coat. (A beautiful peacoat type thing, suited for cool weather but definitely not combat. Lena wonders where she got it and why she’d wear it; but then she also wonders why she wouldn’t wear it literally everywhere all of the time, too, because Lena would. Lena would in an instant.)

“ _Merde_ ,” Amélie mutters.

A moment later Lena echoes with a half sighed “shite.” And Lena is ready to hunker down against the wall and wait to see what happens, whether the Talon agents will bust down the rubble or find them via another entrance, but Amélie is apparently weighing the alternatives.

“We will not wait for Overwatch,” Amélie finally says, her chin is set defiantly upwards, “we will be dead before they have even crossed the Atlantic.” Lena is too dumbfounded to immediately follow, even as Amélie turns on her heel with all the grace of a dancer and begins to take sure and long strides further into the mine shaft.

Lena has a few questions: 1) How does Amélie know that no agents are in the Western Hemisphere? 2) Does wandering through a long-unused coal mine seem like a good idea? 3) How can someone look that good all of the time doing nothing but walking? 4) _“We”?_

“We?” Lena manages; clambers away from the entrance and scurries to Amélie’s side.

“ _Oui_.” Amélie says.

Lena blinks. There are solid moment of dead silence between them as the pun shoots across Lena’s mind like lightning, short circuiting vitally important synapses which had previously been working very hard to transfer the data needed to keep up with all the new events unfolding in her life.

When all systems are back online Lena laughs hard enough that she has to reach for the wall to brace herself. By the way Amélie’s lip barely twitches upward, one can surmise that this was the intention.

* * *

The mines are … drafty, Tracer thinks. And too quiet for her tastes. There are _other_ adjectives to describe it, but Lena’s trying to keep a positive outlook.

In another time, this might have been how the whole ordeal ends: a silent trek through the inside of a mountain, a lot of repressed thoughts, an escape, a disappearance, and a debriefing. Not a conversation, not much of anything at all.

Lucky for them both, Lena has no idea how to shut up.

“Sooooooooo,” She ventures, bumping shoulders with Amélie, the contact sends a shiver down Lena's spine and she's not entirely sure if it's from the temperature. She flashes a winsome smile. Water drips around them. Amélie spares her a side-eyed glance, blinks like a languid cat, and let’s out a soft “hm?”

It’s a good start.

“Montana’s…,” Lena ventures and then finishes lamely: “interesting?”

She grins, and hopes that Amélie will let her in on the secret as to why she’s here. If she's running away from Talon, does that mean she's deserting? Tracer hopes. Tracer has always hoped.

And this is the kind of information you can get by being cute right? Lena slept through the seminar on casual interrogation. Lena slept through a lot of those seminars, actually … Winston would be so disappointed if he knew …

Amélie turns to regard her more fully. They’ve reached an open cavern, with a ceiling and a lot of rusty equipment. Three new tunnels sprout out of the wall across from the tunnel they’ve just exited. Lena’s chronal accelerator is their only source of light and it casts the whole area in a blueish glow.

“That you were able to find me is also _interesting_ ,” Amélie replies, skeptical. Lena blushes. Amélie does not look away and this only makes Lena blush harder; still she flashes a cheeky smile when she replies: 

“Well, I’m always on the look out for you, love.," a beat, and then Lena, feeling exposed, backtracks very subtly (like a truck driving straight through a house), and adds: "You know, ‘cause of the murder-y thing.”

“You do often appear where I least want you to,” says Amélie, her lips verge on the razor thin edge between indifference and affectionate banter and it makes Lena's heart flutter pleasantly.

Lena grins, is about to respond, when a clatter echoes from one of the tunnels. Amélie throws her hand over Lena’s mouth to stop the words from spilling. She glances quickly over her shoulder, and then drags them both behind an overturned mining cart, whereupon Amélie looks into Lena's eyes and then glares hard at her chest and Lena, incapable of speaking, would very much like to. 

“Can that be turned down?” Amélie hisses, pointing to the bright chronal accelerator. There are noises like approaching footsteps from the left tunnel. Lena shakes her head and Amélie removes her hand.

“I never thought to ask Winston for a dimmer setting,” Lena says. Amélie rolls her eyes.

“No one in Overwatch knows how to be discrete,” she mutters, “it is a wonder you all manage to stay alive.”

“Heya, we do alright,” Lena fires back. Blinks. Thinks. And then adds in a whisper-yell: “And discrete my ass, you walk around in a cat suit!”

“ _Shhhhh, ta gueule,_ ” Amélie hisses. Lena has the sense not to argue, and honestly thank god because she’d probably say something she’d later regret if they started to talk for any length of time about the catsuit.

They both hold their collective breath as the footsteps and the people making them enter their cavern.

It was a nice sentiment to believe that they wouldn’t see the blue glowing, but in the real world these Talon agents aren’t that blind or stupid and they immediately b-line. And as an added bit of misfortune, it looks like their two friends from outside of the mine shaft have found more friends because now there are six.

“ _Enculer_ ,” Amélie mutters, her eyes are darting around the room and after a second so does her body - leaving Lena dumbfounded behind the cart. It takes Lena an embarrassing amount of moments before she remembers that, oh yeah, Amélie is currently weaponless.  

“Hey!” She yells, caught off guard. Amélie is not paying attention though and the men are at her back door, so Lena jumps up, grabs her gun and blinks behind the first of her assailants.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she beams when he whirls around to her in abject horror and unrestrained confusion. Lena hits him in the head with the butt of her pistol. Hard. “Ouch,” she says with a whistle. He falls to the ground and the only part of him left moving is his chest. 

Amélie has made her way to a box of rusty tools, she picks up a crowbar just as another of the men reaches her. In a fluid motion she has knocked him down and out. Not with the crowbar, as Lena thought she might, but with a swift kick to the ear … it had impressive height, and probably busted the drum. 

Lena whistles louder this time, mostly in awe.

Amélie’s eyes snap to her and there’s a certain ferociousness to the way her face is so eerily calm when her eyes are raging storms; and suddenly Amélie is hurling the crowbar at her and Lena feels two part betrayed one part blind panic. She recalls out of the way and stabilizes just in time to see the crowbar make contact with a man who is now in the place she had just been. It hits him square between the eyes and he falls over without protest.

While Lena collects herself, stares dumbly, (continues to be completely useless, Amélie will later say) Amélie grabs another weapon from her box - a wrench - and hurls it at another of the Talon agents. Same spot, right on the mark. Lena's not entirely sure how shooting a sniper transfers to throwing hand tools, but honestly - whatever works. 

Lena’s able to pull herself together long enough to shoot another baddy in the foot and he spends so long dramatically crying that they can both hear him as the last remaining man drags them both down the tunnel they came from. The screaming echoes on for a solid minute. Amélie rolls her eyes multiple times as they listen. And then:

The cavern is silent again.

Lena turns to Amélie, Amélie stares at Lena.

Amélie looks ten shades of annoyed, she’s holding another weapon - a screwdriver - and there’s a definitive twitch of her eyebrow. The scene is so absurdly adorable that Lena turns beet red and a ridiculous giggle bubbles in her throat and into the open air between them. Some of it's probably adrenaline. Most of it isn't. 

“Holy hell,” wheezes Lena, grabs her stomach, turns her back quickly to Amélie and tries to hide it all.

“Are you ... laughing?” Amélie asks, dropping the screwdriver. Lena shakes her head.

“You just look …” there’s a pause, a breath, as Lena tries to determine how much she values her life, and concludes that apparently, it’s not very much, “… really cute. Really, really cute, love,” she says. A moment. 

“… what?” Another moment. There are so many moments between them. A wonderful number of moments. 

“When you were all ruffled and with the screwdriver,” Lena laughs, and then tries to stifle it when Amélie only glares, “no, yeah, _sorry_ , sorry.” But she isn't, not really, and she is still grinning.

* * *

Finding their way out is relatively easy after that. They follow a small trail of blood from their friend with the hole in his foot and after about 30 minutes, their light sources becomes significantly more organic, and then Lena's blinking toward the exit and Amélie is still walking, but her stride is a little hastened, if nothing else.

In the open air Lena breathes deeply and grins at the air, and her freedom, and Amélie. The blood trail continues throw the snow, but there's literally no way in hell they're following it. 

“Not so bad, eh?” Lena smiles. She doesn't really expect an answer (she kind of expects a cold shoulder, or a walk away) but Amélie surprises her when she simply replies:

“I have had _worse_ ,” and then: “you can be cute when you laugh.”

Lena feels the blush rush up her neck and to her ears. Amélie smirks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is entirely self-indulgent and as far as plot goes, doesn't add much or solve much but it made me happy?? All loose ends will be wrapped up in the last chapter, I promise. I've got plans haha.
> 
>  
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Unlike Amélie, Lena is twelve different shades of surprised to find, upon reaching her plane, that it is mostly on fire and entirely un-flyable. 

Lena knows that it’s not the  _ best _ plan, but not knowing what else to do, she begins shoveling snow onto the burning hull, hoping to put out the flames, to salvage something, anything. She’s so dead when Solider: 76 finds out. So. Dead. 

Amélie stands to the side, one arm wrapped just under her chest, the opposite hand supporting her face. It’s not funny, or maybe shouldn’t be, but she finds herself hiding a smirk behind the hand. Not particularly for Lena’s misfortune, it  _ is _ unfortunate - it’s just that scene is amusing. Ridiculous, even.

Finally, defeat overtakes Lena, and she falls into the snow with a huff.

“Seventy-six  ‘s going t’ have my arse,” she whines.

“Doubtful,” Amélie replies, in a tone that is neither reassuring nor sympathetic.

“He should be grateful,” says someone who is not Amélie, and who  _ is _ in serious need of an inhaler.

Tracer bolts up – knowing the voice too well. She draws her pistol, and aims it at Reaper;  a sick feeling crawls up her spine which she identifies as instinct and she reflexively reaches for her other pistol but she does not bring it up to Widowmaker, just turns to her – a question on her tongue. She has been on enough battlefields to know where this scenario may be headed. Dread grips her.

There are moments.

There are moments sprinkled between inactivity, sprinkled between mundane and day-to-day; there are moments that  _ are _ inactivity. The breath before the bullet, the blink before the bomb. Sometimes it’s literal, and then … sometimes it’s a conversation, a confession, a smooth gait across a winterscape. 

This time, there are no moments. Amélie is at Lena’s flank as soon as the pistol goes up, and with one hand, she pushes Lena’s arm back to her side. Lena’s heart hammers in the cavity of her chest when Amélie shakes her head and turns to Reaper. Lena’s eyes follow.

“Answering a distress call,” Reaper grunts, by way of explanation. The explanation misses its mark, Tracer does not understand.  _ Talon’s distress call? _

“I called him, chérie,” Amélie elaborates. This time it hits; Amélie never misses a mark. “Before you flew in like a barbarian.”   _ Oh _ . Tracer smiles sheepishly, still a little on edge, but aware that she is both outmatched and cripplingly optimistic about the allegiances of the two assassins before her, she re-clips her pistol.

“Was just tryin’ to be your knight in shining  _ amour _ ,” she says to dispel the tension; it, at least feels like it, has worked. Amélie rolls her eyes; Reaper makes a noise which sounds suspiciously like a snort. They both ignore her.

“Was this your doing?” Amélie asks, nods her head vaguely towards the burning plane.

“Hm.” Reaper confirms.

“Wait,” says Tracer, “…what?”

So here’s a fun fact which Lena, a world class pilot, often forgets, and which Gabriel Reyes, who holds (and has held since the disbanding of Overwatch) the OW superlative of ‘ _ most likely to scare you to death with his terrible driving’ _ never, ever, ever forgets (due in absolutely no way to his relation to vehicles and in absolutely every way to his relation with Sombra, the hellion): the GPS systems and computers in all mobile vehicles can, and will be, hacked. Especially by shady operations like Talon. Especially while those vehicles are unattended.

Not for the first time, Reaper wonders how in the fuck this sorry excuse for Overwatch ever bested him. (The answer, he knows, is that they have Ana Amari and Jack Morrison, though he’d rather shoot his own eye then say it aloud).

“Unbelievable,” Reaper growls. Lena is not expecting the lecture about why there are  _ procedures _ , and  _ protocol _ , and  _ check-ins,  _ and  _ briefing,  _ and  _ debriefings, _ and  _ mission outlines _ that Reaper deems necessary to jump into. Here. In the middle of the woods. But that’s what they get, and for a bit, she listens like a well scolded child, biting her tongue.

Tracer will not say it, but he sounds just like 76. 

Amélie stops the rest of the lecture midway when she suggests, in a tone bordering on boredom, that they should leave. Because Talon is nearby.  Because they are wanted. Because it is  _ cold _ and her coat has bullet holes in it.

Reaper concedes in some sort of unspoken way that Tracer misses and the two of them take matching steps forward. Lena is not sure she’s meant to follow at this point, but a few meters down the way Amélie turns to her.

“ _ We, _ ” she says significantly. With a grin Lena does not even try to contain, she jogs up to them and they begin their trek back into … town? Presumably. 

Reaper mutters a quiet  _ “what?” _ which goes unanswered.

 

* * *

 

Reaper takes them to a diner in a town with a population of less than a thousand (which is fewer people than were in Lena’s graduating class in college) and orders a hamburger and eats it in silence. Amélie orders a milkshake and drinks it in silence and Lena, having no money due to her burning plane, bounces her leg and looks around restlessly until Amélie sticks another straw in the milkshake pushes it between them and cocks an eyebrow, a small smirk on her lips. Lena takes a sip around a smile so large it makes her cheekbones hurt.

“Awww,” she laughs. Amélie does not grace her with a response, and her face doesn’t much move, but she does turn away quickly in something like embarrassment. 

“Stop making eyes at each other,” says Reaper, helpfully, from the other side of the booth. Lena blushes, and they’re quiet again.

“Sooo, uh,” says Lena after a time, “what exactly are we doing?” 

“Thinking of a way to get you back to the Overwatch base,” says Amélie. Reaper grunts.

“Oh… why did’t’cha say so?”

“Was it not obvious?”

Lena’s head hurts, honestly, but at least it’s nice company. Kind of. 

“We probably won’t have to worry about it for much longer,” says Reaper after a bite, “I’m sure Jack will send a recovery team for you. He has weak spots, like that.”

“Sentimentality,” Amélie offers.

“Sure, that,” grumbles Reaper. Amélie turns to Lena, a smirk on her lips, the taunting tone to her voice comes out like a purr. She says:

“Seventy-six is not the only one; I have learned that Reaper is sentimental, too always talking about Jack Morrison and Jesse McCree,” her eyes flicker sideways as she graces Reaper with a judging glance (he mutters into his burger), and then she puts her chin in the palm of her hands, looks back at Lena and says slyly: “perhaps I am also sentimental.”

Lena feels her neck turn seven shade of red, which promptly rises up over her cheeks to the tips of ears. 

 

* * *

 

“I’ve decided, we’ll wait for Jack,” says Reaper, suddenly, “save us a trip.” 

He is probably trying to play it off, as too much hassle, as grumpiness, as something that it isn’t, and Lena’s kind of buying it. But  Amélie, legs crossed, filing her nails, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of a candy shop opposite the diner, is having none of it. 

“Of course,” she says, a condescending flare heavy in her words.

Reaper is sitting in the chair next to her. 

“Not because I want to see him,” he mutters. 

Lena is sitting on the steps, watching these two and it strikes her that they’re not so different from the gang back at Overwatch, bickering like siblings. 

“Hmm,” says Amélie, she glances down at Lena, a lot of information seems to transpire between them and then something in Lena’s brain clicks.

“Oh shite!” she laughs, “Gabriel Reyes fancies Jack Morrison!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not read over this before posting it, so there's probably some errors that I need to correct, I'll do that when I post the last chapter, but in the mean time, I hope they were bearable. 
> 
> I legitimately wasn't going to post this chapter yet, but Sombra is mentioned herein, and I wanted to post before anything was confirmed because I have this really bad habit of dropping things when the narrative shifts in a way which contradicts with my theory about how it will go (which happens all the time??) Anyway, if it turns out that Sombra is a group rather than an individual, at the info was cemented as a fact before I posted this chapter, there was like a 98% chance this story wasn't getting finished. I don't know why I'm like this. :'))))
> 
> That all said, if you enjoyed, make sure to hit that kudos or drop me a comment! Each one is like a knifing to my crippling self-doubt ... or fuel for my narcissism ... hard to tell sometimes. :')

**Author's Note:**

> It's not great writing, but I hope it's at least fun! Also, I definitely looked up French curses for this. I could have probably looked up not curses, but I did not do that thing.


End file.
